HOULTON, Maine — The scent is undeniable. Take a stroll through downtown Houlton Wednesday through Saturday, and if you aren’t hungry you soon will be.
For 65 years, Sadie’s Bakery has been an icon in the Houlton area, as the enticing smell of warm, freshly made doughnuts wafts through the downtown air. The fact that the bakery is located around the corner from a fitness center likely makes it that much more difficult for many to get into workout mode.
Tim and Sharon O’Donnell have been making the doughnuts for 35 of those years. The Hodgdon couple purchased Sadie’s nearly in May of 1978, but the business itself dates back to 1948.
Mildred Oliver owned the shop for about 11 years before the O’Donnells purchased it in 1978. The business dates back to 1948 when Sadie Hand opened a bakery on Military Street. She later moved the doughnut and pastry business downtown to the Dunn Block and eventually to its current location on Water Street.
“I was cooking at Ivey’s Motel and that was quite a restaurant back in its heyday,” Tim said. “Harold Cassidy and Mike Carpenter approached me and asked if I was interested in buying the business. Harold’s mother-in-law Mildred owned it, but she was looking to sell. They thought it would be a great opportunity for me.”
At the time, Tim was in his early 20s and the thought of owning his own business was both pleasing and terrifying. Tim had schooling in the institutional food service (cafeteria) industry and spent four years with Henry Ivey as a cook, so he felt comfortable in his cooking abilities, but had not specialized in baking doughnuts and pastries.
“I enjoyed getting a weekly paycheck, but Sharon encouraged me and together we made it work,” he said. “We worked a lot of long, hard hours for those first three years, often coming in at 6 in the morning and leaving at 10 at night, six days a week.”
The doughnut recipe has remained unchanged for the past 65 years, but other elements at Sadie’s Bakery have been tweaked over time. At one time, they baked beans every Saturday evening and also supplied pastries, pies, bread and rolls for Irving, Sunoco, Woolco and Elm Tree Diner.
They still make muffins, cookies, whoopie pies, three types of bread, dinner rolls and other pastries, but it is the doughnut that continues to be their biggest seller. Over the years, though, the O’Donnells have slowed the pace at their bakery; cutting back on the hours they are open, and scaling back on the amount of products they make.
“The days of getting here super early in the morning are over,” he joked.
Sharon said they have received a number of requests over the years to ship their doughnuts out of town.
“Usually they are people that are from here originally, and they’ve gotten a hankering for one of our doughnuts,” Tim said.
Another popular item with customers is fried doughboys, but those are only made one night a year during the town’s “Midnight Madness” celebration. On that night, a line of patrons waiting for doughboys can run anywhere from 30-50 deep.
“We only do the doughboys once a year,” he said. “It got popular really fast. But it is also a lot of hard work.”
Sharon said they have tried selling doughboys at other times of the year, but the volume of foot traffic downtown just didn’t support it.
“We tried it at Potato Feast Days, but it just doesn’t seem to work,” she said.
Patron’s habits have also changed over the years. In the past, there was a steady business of people coming in the afternoon buying doughnuts for the week. Today, the average customer is looking to get doughnuts for their place of work in the morning.
Tim said he has learned to stick with what they know best, which is obviously doughnuts, in plain, molasses and chocolate. All three varieties come with sugar or without. They’ve experimented with other flavors, but those three flavors remain the staple of their business.
Sadies Bakery is open Wednesday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturday from 7 a.m. to noon. Wednesday is molasses doughnut day, while chocolate doughnuts are made on Fridays, Plain doughnuts are served on Thursdays and Saturdays.
